I mean, they already hire behavioral psychologists, micro economists and shit. EA is probably tired of paying all those PhDs and wants an algorithm to do it. Which would be fucking HILARIOUS. Imagine EA suits putting in minimums and maximums of cash for some dystopian AI. There's no way that wouldn't be hilariously fucking terrible and awful.
I really doubt Bioware had enough freedom to wander off on their own during production. EA isn't really known for allowing its devs too much leeway, they usually hold the reins tight, so I will assume that Anthem is a mess cause EA execs demanded a shitton of stolen ideas and concepts from some other games that just didn't mix up very well. Doesn't help that Bioware is just a shadow of itself at this point, but the idea that they weren't ordered around by EA seems strange to me.
The thing you have to remember with a lot of these articles, even though they are anonymous, EA is vindictive as fuck so its just easier to not say what everybody really already knows.
I think Frostbite is a level editor for FPS games and not a proper game engine. That part where they had a hard time implementing a third person camera is nonsense, in Unity, you can do this in 10 seconds.
So I don't believe Frostbite is a genuine game engine, it's more of an editor like RPG Maker. Does someone have more info about that?
Frostbite is originally (and to my knowledge) and is (was) an exclusively FPS engine. It isn't a level editor, but it is basically solely designed with large FPS games in mind like Battlefront, Battlefield and Bad Company. Frostbite was designed to make things pretty and blow the fuck up nice in a first person environment. Using it in 3rd Person titles like FIFA and Madden isn't the engines intention, but its easier because you're not rendering an open world map, its a singular map which plays to the strengths of the engine. Its also why Anthem is split into zones. Frostbite isn't designed for an open world environment or animation, which is why the animation and character design from Andromeda is a fucking abomination. Its basically there to do mapping and have deformable terrain and objects on singular large maps, not open worlds. Which is why it would be a nightmare in a game like Anthem, which needs an engine that can handle 3rd person mechanics. You also have to remember in Fifa and Madden you aren't flying around, so player physics would be pretty easy. Same with the ball, it'd basically be a moving piece of that terrain, in engine terms. So yeah, you can shoe-horn the thing into sports games because it plays to some of the engine's strengths. An engine actually made for sports games would probably make life easier for the developers but EA doesn't really give a fuck about that. They spent money on this FPS engine and they don't even know what that is so they'll use it damn it!
An RPG FPS on multiple maps, yes.
An open-world, 3rd Person RPG with flight mechanics? You are out of your fucking mind. It was not designed to do any of those things.
EA made them use Frostbite because it was cheap. Fuck, using Unity would have made a better game and Unity is cheap as dirt. EA is just that fucking stingy.
